Tuesday, 27 September 2011

After reading this blogpost I started thinking about what has brought me to where I am at the moment, as well as some of the places I’ve been before.

First, there was France. Ever since I was a kid, I’d been planning to go on exchange when I was old enough. I don’t remember where I first found out about exchange programs, but I know my mum had told me she’d been planning to go to the US for a year when she met my dad, so she changed her plans. I suppose I talked about going on exchange for years, so I never really had to have the talk with my parents, trying to convince them to let me do it – I always assumed I would be going on exchange when the time came. For a long time I wanted to go to New Zealand, but towards the end of high school, when the time was getting closer for me to apply, my parents told me I should go to a non-English speaking country, and since I was studying French, that was the obvious choice.

A year after I got back from my exchange in France, I went back there for a couple of months to work in Disneyland. Once again, it was something I’d been thinking about for a long time. My aunt’s sister in law has been working at Disneyland Paris for years, and ever since I found out about the possibility to go and work there for a summer (which, again, was many years ago) I’d been planning to do it when I was old enough. So I did.

Then there was London, twice. The first time was sort of a coincidence. I was supposed to spend the summer in a small Welsh village, but circumstances changed and I suddenly found myself in South London. Not a bad deal, really. The “second time” was right after, with just a short break in between. This one had a lot more thought put into it. Once again, it was an exchange, Erasmus this time, which was something else I’d intended to do pretty much since I found out about it, whenever that was. The past few years I had considered different options, but Brussels had been the main one since I started studying. At some point London pushed itself into my head, and in the end I applied to go to London and Chester. I got the place in London, and voilà – there I was.

This time around is a completely random one. A strange train of thought is what brought me here, for the simple reason “Why not?”. It started from finding out that my favourite band was performing at the Fringe this August, to the idea that there would be lots of jobs during the festival, so maybe I should apply, to going to Edinburgh in June to spend the summer there, to deciding to stay for an undetermined period of time. And here we are.

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This is where I write about things that are important to me, that play a part in my life, or that just happen to be on my mind. Common topics include travel, languages, cultural differences and pretty things. Thanks for reading!